Fereshteh Ahmadi: Iran+100

Comma Press, 2025, softcover, 192 pages, 19.6 x 13.1 cm

Iran +100 poses a simple question to 10 Iranian authors: What might Iran look like in the year 2053, a century after the coup that overthrew the democratically-elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, strengthened the US-aligned Shah and led, through revolt and counter-revolt, to the current authoritarian regime? After decades of international isolation, and internal political struggle, not least the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement, will progressive aspirations finally have borne fruit? Or will the future merely offer new, tech-enabled strategies for maintaining the status quo?

From the sinking of Tehran into a great, tourist-attracting ‘Pit’, to inter-dimensional voids revealing parallel universes, these stories explore contemporary concerns, extrapolated into strange futures. From the upturning of gender-power structures to the scarcity of energy resources in a sun-ravaged future, from magic realism to retro-futurism, they demonstrate how old struggles can always find new forms of expression